How will AI, AR, and VR Impact Meetings for Advisors?

At Ironstone, we strive to embrace the latest technology offerings to help our financial advisor clients enjoy the most convenient and productive options for communication as we coach them towards best practices for their firm.

While being onsite is ideal in certain situations, many touch points can be handled virtually with the right technology. We’ve recently enjoyed embracing Zoom, a rock-solid platform for virtual meetings.

A few months ago, Zoom shared the results of a survey of their users to see how they think meetings will change with the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence), AR (Augmented Reality), and VR (Virtual Reality). The results will give you an exciting peek into what your future meetings with clients could look like.

Workers spend a good portion of their work week in meetings.

To start, the results indicated that most workers spent a significant part of their work week in meetings. On average it’s 8.8 hours. If you’re a director level and above it goes up to an average of 10.4 hours a week.

This means any improvements to how you meet could result in major potential productivity gains. Those improvements could come from technology, adopting best practices like an agenda, or just saying “No” to lower-value meetings.

Meeting note taking may become a thing of the past.

In the study, Zoom wanted to understand what tasks associated with meetings were workers most excited to have taken over by technology. What came out on top?

Note taking

Scheduling

Transcription

All these are important and time-consuming tasks that are only now beginning to be handled by technology. Workers are eager to offload these jobs to machines and free up employees to work on other more important and interesting tasks.

AI could save you a lot of time in your work week.

Over 65% of those surveyed think AI will save them at least an hour a week of busy work, with many thinking it will save them one to five hours a week.

That percentage goes up to a whopping 78.8% for heavy meeting users (more than 10 hours a week). That’s between 4 and 20 hours a month you could potentially get back as we see these technologies implemented.

Out of all of these new technologies, respondents were most excited about AI.

73% of people surveyed believed AI would have a positive impact on their physical and virtual meetings. It was lower for AR at 67% and only 53% for VR.

As Zoom dug into the results, the AI applications for some of the most taxing tasks associated with meetings are relatively clear. Most respondents had a much harder time imagining the applications for AR and VR. Zoom hypothesizes consumer technologies like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri have made AI a little more tangible for the average professional.

In Conclusion

As a leading coach of financial advisors from coast to coast, we’re excited about implementing cutting edge technologies like Zoom with our clients.